‘You’re making me green with envy, dear. We’d love to go to Spain ourselves this year.’ She’d got the message: Malaysia was history. ‘So, what can I do for you, Nick?’
‘The holiday went so well I’m thinking of going to London with my new girlfriend for a while, maybe for a couple of weeks. Romance is definitely in the air – you still think her name is Suzy or Zoe, something like that. But I really called to say thank you very much again for the lift you gave me to the station this morning.’
‘Oh, yes. The eight sixteen wasn’t it? The express to Waterloo?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘A couple of weeks, that sounds lovely. I hope you have a good time. She sounds like a really nice girl. Are we going to see her one day?’
‘All in good time, Rosemary – no need to buy a new hat just yet. Anything I should know about?’
‘Not much at all, really. We’ve got a new TV in the lounge, it came last Tuesday. You were out, so you weren’t here to see the delivery. It’s a Sony widescreen, black, twenty-four-inch. You and James like it, but I don’t because it makes the cabinet it’s on look too small. You know, the brown veneer one?’
‘I know it well. But never mind – just think, Delia will be even bigger and better than usual. Anyway, say hello to James for me, won’t you?’
‘Of course. He isn’t here at the moment, he’s gone to Waitrose. After doing nothing but complain and chair that damned committee to stop the thing being built, you can’t keep him out of there!’
We both laughed, said goodbye, and I headed towards the kitchen to make us a brew.
The intercom buzzed and I hit the button. A slightly anxious voice crackled, ‘Hello, I’m Simon, I believe I’m expected. A lady called Yvette told me to be here at three.’
I hit the entry button as Suzy came out of the bedroom and shut the door behind her, then started to check round the flat in case we’d left the odd SD sitting on the tea-tray.
I flicked the kettle on in the kitchen, then opened the front door. Looking down the stairwell, I could see the top of a neatly cut and combed blond head making its way towards me from a couple of flights below. As he got closer, I saw he was in his early thirties, tall and thin, and very well groomed. That made sense: you probably would give yourself a good scrub after spending the day surrounded by flesh-eating bugs and all that sort of shit.
When he reached the landing I stepped back to let him in. He had to be at least six four: I was looking into his neck. He was clutching a battered canvas shoulder-bag he must have had since his student days. He could have been captain of the basketball team, but was probably too polite.
‘Hello, mate.’
He hesitated in the hallway, his hand half out, not too sure what to do. We shook and smiled at each other. He was very clean-shaven, and his cheeks had the kind of bright red patches you usually only see at the circus. Maybe it had been an effort climbing the stairs, or maybe he was just flapping. He struck me immediately as one of those people who had pocketfuls of niceness. I hoped we weren’t going to spoil things for him.
I pointed to my right, and he followed me through to the front room. I offered him the settee. ‘I’ve just put the kettle on – want a brew?’
Suzy came in and held out her hand with a welcoming ‘Hello.’ He was half-way down into the settee but still as tall as she was when her hand disappeared into his. ‘Nothing for me, thanks. I won’t be staying long, there’s a car waiting for me. I have another brief at four thirty.’
Suzy was all smiles as her eyes locked briefly on mine. It wouldn’t be a brief he was going to at half four but isolation, until this job was over. ‘You don’t want any of his tea? Wise move – I bet most of the stuff in your laboratory tastes better.’
Terrible joke, but he laughed all the same, still not sure whether to stand up again or sit right down. Suzy waved him into the seat. ‘Simon, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Simon, Simon Ma—’
She held up her hand. ‘Simon’ll do just fine. Well, Simon, what have you got for us today?’
19
‘May I?’ His bag hovered above the table while he waited for permission.
‘Of course.’ Suzy was doing a good job of making him feel comfortable, but with his arse sunk down in the settee and his knees up by his chin he certainly didn’t look it.
The bag went down and he took off his coat to reveal a maroon cardigan over his brown checked shirt. He still looked nervous; maybe it didn’t look like an FCO brief and he was worried we’d have to shoot him afterwards.
Once he’d unbuckled his bag, he pulled out a clutch of ten-by-eight colour photographs and put them on the table. He cleared his throat.
‘Simon, quick question before you start?’ I always wanted to know who was giving me a brief. Not having enough knowledge to pass on is sometimes more dangerous than not knowing anything at all. ‘Can you tell us where you’re from?’
Suzy’s chewing filled in the second or two of silence while he wondered if that would be OK.
‘Of course. I’m a doctor, formerly working in Namibia, before becoming a consultant at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine here in London. After the US anthrax attacks I became a technical adviser on biological agents slash weapons for the Foreign Office – briefings for embassy staff, that sort of thing.’
Suzy interrupted, with a smile, ‘What have you been told about why you’re here today, Simon?’
‘Just that I’m to fill you in on pneumonic plague and its potential as a weapon. No more than that.’
She nodded her thanks and I signalled that I had no further questions. He picked up the dozen or so ten-by- eights and passed them to me. ‘This is the type of case I’ve tried to treat over the years.’
I looked down and found myself inspecting a series of close-ups of a bloated old man’s body – head, arms, torso, legs – covered in swellings and weeping pus. His gangrenous fingers and toes looked like they’d been pushed into a food processor. I tried not to look at the one of his face, at the terror in his eyes. This guy was being eaten alive. The foil rustled on Suzy’s blister pack and I knew she was trying to avoid it too.
Simon’s eyes flickered between the two of us with a nervous smile, trying to establish if this was the level of information we wanted. As Suzy put the last of the scary pictures back on to the table, he took it as his cue to carry on. ‘There are two main variants. Bubonic plague, you’ll have heard of – it was responsible for the Black Death in the fourteenth century, killing over thirty million in Europe alone. Bubonic plague was what the nursery rhyme was all about – “Ring a ring o’ roses, a pocketful of posies”.’
Suzy finished it for him. ‘“Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down!”’
I didn’t join in. It was another nursery rhyme I’d never learned. My stepdad didn’t like things like that going on in the house. My mum had to be at work at the launderette, not wasting time teaching her kids that sort of nonsense. Knowing shit like that never got anyone a job.
He cleared his throat again. ‘Yes, thirty million in Europe alone, the biggest chunk of population ever killed by any epidemic. But bubonic plague is the less deadly variant of the two.’ His eyes flicked between the two of us again. ‘The variant I am talking about today is pneumonic plague, which infects the lungs and is so highly contagious that it’s an A-class weapon. The only other two with that designation are smallpox and anthrax – that’s how bad this disease is. If treatment is delayed more than twenty-four hours after infection, the mortality rate is virtually one hundred per cent.’
Suzy was leaning towards him now. ‘So its supply or whatever is tightly controlled?’
He smiled fleetingly. ‘It cannot be controlled. Pneumonic plague is caused naturally by the bacterium
I didn’t really give a shit about poor old Archibald. I wanted to keep Simon on track. ‘It can be used as a weapon?’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about. Just fifty kilograms sprayed over a city the size
